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Eternal Damnation in the Fragments of Clement of Alexandria? Daniel J

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Eternal Damnation in the Fragments of Clement of Alexandria? Daniel J Bryn Mawr College Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Students 2017 The yT ranny of Authority: Eternal Damnation in the Fragments of Clement of Alexandria? Daniel J. Crosby Bryn Mawr College, [email protected] Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy . Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.brynmawr.edu/gsas_pubs Part of the Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons, Ancient Philosophy Commons, Christianity Commons, History of Christianity Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Citation Crosby, Daniel J., "The yT ranny of Authority: Eternal Damnation in the Fragments of Clement of Alexandria?" (2017). Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 4. http://repository.brynmawr.edu/gsas_pubs/4 This paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. http://repository.brynmawr.edu/gsas_pubs/4 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Tyranny of Authority: Eternal Damnation in the Fragments of Clement of Alexandria? In the year 1715, John Potter published the most comprehensive edition of the extant writings of the Clement of Alexandria, the second-century Church Father who is most famous for his apologetic Protrepticus and intensely philosophical Stromata. Potter’s edition includes a collection of fragments, and among these fragments, this one is conspicuous: Ἀθάνατοι πᾶσαι αἱ ψυχαὶ, καὶ τῶν ἀσεβῶν, αἷς ἄμεινον ἦν μὴ ἀφθάρτους εἶναι. Κολαζόμεναι γὰρ ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀσβέτου πυρὸς ἀπεράντῳ τιμωρίᾳ καὶ μὴ θνήσκουσαι, ἐπὶ κακῷ τῷ ἑαυτῶν τέλος λαβεῖν οὐκ ἔχουσιν.1 All souls are immortal, even those of the wicked, for whom it is better that they were not deathless. For, punished with the endless vengeance of quenchless fire, and not dying, it is impossible for them to have a period assigned to their misery.2 This fragment would represent the single clearest expression of Clement’s thoughts on hell and punishment in the entire corpus: the wicked are damned eternally. As the source of this fragment, Potter cites the Loci communes, an anthology of famous quotations compiled by Maximus the Confessor, which reports the passage under the heading “of Clement.”3 All of the nineteenth- century critical editions of Clement’s writings include the fragment in their collections: thus, Klotz in 1834,4 Le Nourry in 1858,5 and Dindorf in 1869,6 all clearly relying on Potter’s 1 John Potter, ed., Clementis Alexandrini Opera, Quae Exstant, vol. 2 (Oxford: Sheldonian Theater, 1715), 1020. See “Potter (1715),” below. 2 Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Liturgies and Other Documents of the Ante-Nicene Period, vol. 24, Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1872), 163; Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), vol. 2, The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325 (Buffalo, NY: The Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1885), 580. 3 Based on the facts that nothing like these words is found in those writings of Clement that are preserved more completely, that the fragment pertains to a doctrine of the soul, and that Maximus the Confessor includes it in a section titled “on the soul,” Potter hypothesizes that the text comes from a lost treatise of Clement that was also called “on the soul.” Potter, Clementis Alexandrini Opera, Quae Exstant, 2:1020. See “Potter (1715),” below and Maximus, Serm. 53. 4 Reinhold Klotz, ed., Titi Flaui Clementis Alexandrini Opera Omnia, vol. 4 (E.B. Schwickert, 1834), 83. See “Klotz (1834),” below. 5 Nicolai Le Nourry, ed., Clementis Alexandrini Opera Quae Exstant Omnia, vol. 8, Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1857), 751–2. See “Le Nourry (1858),” below. 6 Wilhelm Dindorf, ed., Clementis Alexandrini Opera, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869), 499. See “Dindorf (1869),” below. 1 authority directly or indirectly. There are, though, two famous Early Church Fathers named Clement, and this fragment actually belongs to the Homilies that circulate under the name of Clement of Rome, the first-century Pope,7 not to any work of Clement of Alexandria. Potter, therefore, must have read the heading “of Clement” and assumed incorrectly that it belonged to his Clement. In his early-twentieth century edition, Stählin correctly assigns the fragment to the texts associated with Clement of Rome and omits it from his collection, but his work said too little and appeared too late. It was too little, because he did not offer an argument for excluding the fragment; he only included it in a simple list and chart of misattributed fragments.8 Although Stählin’s critical edition became and remains the authority for scholars who have Greek, the lack of discussion about his decision to exclude the fragment made it difficult for anyone who was not intimately familiar with the preceding editions to notice that he had chosen to leave it out. It was too late because Roberts and Donaldson had already published an English translation of the collected fragments of Clement of Alexandria in 1872 as part of the large and influential series containing writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, relying on Le Nourry’s edition.9 Their translation became the authority for those who did not focus on the Greek text. As a result of the 7 ἀθάνατος γὰρ ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ τῶν ἀσεβῶν, οἷς ἄμεινον ἦν μὴ ἄφθαρτον αὐτὴν ἔχειν. κολαζομένη γὰρ ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀσβέστου πυρὸς ἀπεράντῳ τιμωρίᾳ καὶ μὴ θνῄσκουσα, ἐπὶ κακῷ τῷ αὑτῆς τέλος λαβεῖν οὐκ ἔχει. Ps.-Clem. Rom. Hom. 11.11.2. 8 Otto Stählin, ed., Clemens Alexandrinus: Protrepticus Und Paedagogus, vol. 1, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller Der Ersten Drei Jahrhunderte (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1905), LXII; Otto Stählin, ed., Clemens Alexandrinus: Stromata Buch VII Und VIII–Excerpta Ex Theodoto—Eclogae Propheticae—Quis Dives Salvetur—Fragmente, vol. 3, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller Der Ersten Drei Jahrhunderte (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1909), LXXI. 9 See footnote 2, above and “Roberts and Donaldson (1872),” below. Interestingly, Le Nourry’s admittedly confusing format of presentation for the two fragments, which Potter assigned to a treatise titled “on the soul,” has led to a misunderstanding about their respective sources. Roberts and Donaldson clearly cite Cod. Barocc. 143 as the source for the fragment about eternal punishment, but this manuscript actually records the earlier fragment. Cf.: Κλήμεν(τος) (/) Πάντων ἀναπνέουσαι αἱ ψυχαί: τὸ ζῆν ἔ(/)χουσι: κ᾽ἂν χωρισθῶσι τοῦ σώματος: (καὶ) (/) τὸν εἰς αὐτὸν εὑρεθῶσι πόθον ἐχουσαι: εἰς τὸν τοῦ θ(εο)ῦ κόλπον φέρονται ἀθάνατοι (/) ὡς ἐν χειμῶνος ὤρα οἱ ἀτμοὶ τῆς γῆς (/) ὑπὸ τῶν τοῦ ἡλίου ἀκτίνων ἐφἑλκόμε(/)νοι: φέρωσιν πρὸς αὐτὸν. Cod. Barocc. 143, 181r13–20. See “MS. Barocc. 143, 181r13–20,” below. 2 dependence of scholarship on either of these editions, a significant divide on the issue of punishment and hell in the writings of Clement of Alexandria arose, and these two, mutually exclusive positions have remained all but entirely discrete. One group, relying on Stählin, rightly supported a more Platonic view of corrective punishment that leads eventually to universal salvation,10 but the other, relying on Roberts and Donaldson, incorrectly perpetuated a myth of eternal damnation in Clement’s thought.11 Neither was in conversation with the other. This brief analysis helps engage two discrete traditions in debate, and helps us ultimately to prefer one, having proved the other to be dependent upon Potter’s misattribution of the fragment. Clement did not think of the punishment of the soul as persisting eternally. More importantly, though, I think that this investigation raises an important question that is more broadly relevant to the disciplines of Classics and Early Christian Studies, namely, how ought scholars engage with the critical editions of the texts that they study. With regard to this question, this case study demonstrates not only that editors’ decisions can have a profound, lasting, and unnoticed effect on later scholarship, but also that a lack of appreciation of the theories, ideas, and traditions that underlie editorial decisions can elevate the text from a level of authority to a tyranny. By way of conclusion, then, I suggest that the best way to combat this 10 Brian E. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Cambridge University Press, 1991), 44–7; John R. Sachs, “Apocatastasis in Patristic Theology,” Theological Studies 54 (1993): 118–20; Zachary J. Hayes, “The Purgatorial View,” in Four Views on Hell, ed. William Crockett (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 100–1; Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 124–7. 11 Thomas Stoughton Potwin, The Triumph of Life: A Biblical Study of God’s Way with Our Race (New York: John B. Alden, 1886), 175; Francis Ryan Montgomery Hitchcock, Clement of Alexandria (New York: S.P.C.K., 1899), 73; William E. G. Floyd, Clement of Alexandria’s Treatment of the Problem of Evil, Oxford Theological Monographs. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 67; Jeffrey A. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 109–10; Sharon L. Baker, Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught about God’s Wrath and Judgment (Lousville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 6; Christopher M. Date, Gregory G. Stump, and Joshua W. Anderson, Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014), 13. Salmon is the only one to acknowledge both thoughts in Clement’s corpus and is rightly confused over it.
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